I'll lay odds that the U.N. will do nothing about, the defiant, Iran. Sanctions! Iran will just thumb its nose at them and continue their nuclear program. Any wagers?__________________Terrence P. Tuffy

Be steady in your convictions, and be a person of your word.
Book of Sirach 5:10

However, this is not unexpected. They had been the longterm enemy of Hussein and his Sunni gang. Each neutralized the other. Now, the sole Superpower has 130,000 troops next door to a country we call "Evil". Of course, they want to arm to the teeth.

On top of that, they may well feel that America is running low on troops, money and will, while Israel is suddenly vulnerable.

We'd better play our next hand a lot smarter than we've played so far.

Originally Posted by TerrencePTuffyLSA69I'll lay odds that the U.N. will do nothing about, the defiant, Iran. Sanctions! Iran will just thumb its nose at them and continue their nuclear program. Any wagers?

I/M/O there are 3 countries that will decide if sanctions will be placed against Iran. Those countries are Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq. They presently control 50% of the world's oil reserves and if they fear the loss of control with Iran having the bomb they will assure the vote goes their way.

Not about anything more than a very few men in Iran with dreams of conquest by nuclear blackmail. The overwhelming majority of people in Iran do not want nuclear weapons. They are already living in total fear, especially the young people that their "leaders" and marching them down the road to disaster.

Iran's War Games the past two weeks certainly were not meant to impress the United States or the rest of the world. They were meant to impress their own people not to revolt. Motorcycles coming out of the back of a helicopter or blowing up a dirigable impresses no one.

I/M/O the answer for Iran lies within not at the U.N. but unfortunately the U.N. is all we have to pass the necessary "resolutions" to force the Leaders of Iran to get off their quest for domination of the world's oil supply.

The leaders of Iran know full well they will never be allowed to build a nuclear weapon. They also know that to ever use one would mean the total destruction of Iran within minutes. The young people of Iran know that also. The young people of Iran are not illiterate and know full well the nuclear weapon capability and pinpoint accurate delivery systems their leaders are challenging not to mention the conventional weapon systems they face.

Those same young people also saw the destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure by Israel utilizing about 2% of it's total military strength.

The "leaders" of Iran are playing the Cuban Missle Crisis Game. What they want is an ironclad agreement that Iran will never be invaded. They will never be allowed to get into a position to demand that. They are surrounded and have no place to run.

The stock markets of the world are thumbing their collective noses right back at Iran. Now if the DOW dropped 1500 points then I will start worrying about Iran's nuclear capability.

Guess that means that the leaders of Iran should watch out what they wish for, in this case a nuclear warhead, because they just might get one.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called Tuesday for a purge of liberal and secular teachers from the country's universities, urging students to return to 1980s-style radicalism.__________________Terrence P. Tuffy

Be steady in your convictions, and be a person of your word.
Book of Sirach 5:10

The USA has lost any real clout it had or credibility due to the actions of our "leaders" over the past 6 years. No one trusts the claims or promises of GWB & Co. So before you go blaming the UN system or the world look at what brought us to this point. Iran is surrounded by well armed enemies. Israel has American nukes, the USA is in Afghanistan and Iraq and shown it's willingness to do stupid irrational things. Like the USA the "leadership" of Iran stays in power using fear and panic and derides those wanting peace and accomodation with the world as "Chamberlains". Like the GOP using Amajinjin (sp?) as a scare they use GWB as thiers. This is the classic spiral of fear and war that leads the sheep to death and destruction. Greyinggator is right that most of the people want liberalisation and in fact were heading that way before the current "administration" gave so much virtual support to the hard rightwing in Iran (by supporting their opposition and invading Iraq). The purging of liberals which TT points out is not a good sign, is further proof of a hunkering down out of fear mentality. The world needs nothing short of a new path, away from wars, not just a temporary cease fire. Isolating Iran will be as successful as isolating Cuba. At least Cuba has no resource they can use against us. What troubles me is that no one on either side is seeing the path they are taking....both sides spend all thier energies preparing for wars instead of working for peace. You reap what you sow.....

"Israel has American Nukes..." Actually, Israel had French help in developing nuclear weapons as this excerpt from The Federation of American Scientists site indicates. Israel would use American F-15s, and F-16s as delivery systems for their 250 or so nuclear weapons, but this technologically advanced nation also produces its own missiles, as well as aircraft, tanks etc. Their second strike force probably consists of nuclear armed cruise missiles on the submarines they bought from Germany. But, rather than researching an issue I guess its much easier just to mindlessly blame the U.S.

"For reactor design and construction, Israel sought the assistance of France. Nuclear cooperation between the two nations dates back as far as early 1950's, when construction began on France's 40MWt heavy water reactor and a chemical reprocessing plant at Marcoule. France was a natural partner for Israel and both governments saw an independent nuclear option as a means by which they could maintain a degree of autonomy in the bipolar environment of the cold war.

In the fall of 1956, France agreed to provide Israel with an 18 MWt research reactor. However, the onset of the Suez Crisis a few weeks later changed the situation dramatically. Following Egypt's closure of the Suez Canal in July, France and Britain had agreed with Israel that the latter should provoke a war with Egypt to provide the European nations with the pretext to send in their troops as peacekeepers to occupy and reopen the canal zone. In the wake of the Suez Crisis, the Soviet Union made a thinly veiled threat against the three nations. This episode not only enhanced the Israeli view that an independent nuclear capability was needed to prevent reliance on potentially unreliable allies, but also led to a sense of debt among French leaders that they had failed to fulfill commitments made to a partner. French premier Guy Mollet is even quoted as saying privately that France "owed" the bomb to Israel.

On 3 October 1957, France and Israel signed a revised agreement calling for France to build a 24 MWt reactor (although the cooling systems and waste facilities were designed to handle three times that power) and, in protocols that were not committed to paper, a chemical reprocessing plant. This complex was constructed in secret, and outside the IAEA inspection regime, by French and Israeli technicians at Dimona, in the Negev desert under the leadership of Col. Manes Pratt of the IDF Ordinance Corps.

Both the scale of the project and the secrecy involved made the construction of Dimona a massive undertaking. A new intelligence agency, the Office of Science Liasons,(LEKEM) was created to provide security and intelligence for the project. At the height construction, some 1,500 Israelis some French workers were employed building Dimona. To maintain secrecy, French customs officials were told that the largest of the reactor components, such as the reactor tank, were part of a desalinization plant bound for Latin America. In addition, after buying heavy water from Norway on the condition that it not be transferred to a third country, the French Air Force secretly flew as much as four tons of the substance to Israel.

Trouble arose in May 1960, when France began to pressure Israel to make the project public and to submit to international inspections of the site, threatening to withhold the reactor fuel unless they did. President de Gaulle was concerned that the inevitable scandal following any revelations about French assistance with the project, especially the chemical reprocessing plant, would have negative repercussions for France's international position, already on shaky ground because of its war in Algeria.

At a subsequent meeting with Ben-Gurion, de Gaulle offered to sell Israel fighter aircraft in exchange for stopping work on the reprocessing plant, and came away from the meeting convinced that the matter was closed. It was not. Over the next few months, Israel worked out a compromise. France would supply the uranium and components already placed on order and would not insist on international inspections. In return, Israel would assure France that they had no intention of making atomic weapons, would not reprocess any plutonium, and would reveal the existence of the reactor, which would be completed without French assistance. In reality, not much changed - French contractors finished work on the reactor and reprocessing plant, uranium fuel was delivered and the reactor went critical in 1964."

Jim, Ok on the source correction but do you think the world is better off with Israel having ~200nukes???? What could they possibly do good with a supply like that...and if YOU were Iran's leader what would YOU want for Xmas? You failed to challenge my main point which is that the USA in a non-player on the world stage until we get rid of the discredited "leadership" and take a path emphasizing peace. Arming Israel to the teeth is NOT a path to peace.

The Israeli nuclear arsenal is roughly numerically equal to that of France. The French nuclear weapons systems are far more sophisticated however, and they include carrier attack aircraft and MIRV'd missiles on a fleet of Trident like balllistic missile submarines.

Israel is a relatively small nation surrounded by countries that frequently call for its annihilation. Given the history of the Jewish people, particularly the holocaust, this is a threat that Israel takes seriously, hence the nuclear deterrent.

What is the case for an independent French nuclear deterrent? They are allied and at peace with Germany their historic enemy. The new Germany is green and borderline pacifist, and has no territorial claims on France. The Soviet Union no longer exists, and while Russia could conceivably be considered a threat to Ukraine or the Baltic States it is not a threat to France. Unlike the United States re: Japan, France has no obligations to defend potentially threatened non-nuclear states. Who are they afraid of, Liechtenstein?

The bottom line is that France does not need nuclear weapons for defensive purposes. They exist, along with France's security council seat, to help maintain the illusion that France is still a great power. If you want a nuclear free world wouldn't a nation that maintains a nuclear force merely as a status symbol be the place to start?

Someone once advised me that, 'casting facts before fools was the same as casting pearls before swine.'

It is surprising that as the Israeli nuclear program has the Great Fog Imprimatur it is still subject to criticism by the ultimate Francophile.But as this is a ‘UN’ thread then like the UN itself, nothing has to make any sense. Certainly, the UN’s pressuring a member state, a state they in fact established, to make concessions to a group of thugs representing no one, makes no sense.Sort of like their proclivity to issue and then ignore their own resolutions.

But then there are so many ridiculous comments here that the mind boggles. “Facts before fools” Jim, a waste of time.

Jim, Israel has a land mass of about 20Km2 versus France at 545Km2 so it is a significant nation to defend. You are right that it's traditional enemies are no longer such. But the development of the French nuclear deterent was in a period of Cold War threats by the then Soviet. France, not wanting to be left under someone elses optional umbrella, like the UK developed it's own deterent. One might reasonably argue that it is not very necessary today. Israel has absolutely no need for a nuclear deterent beyond10 weapons. That is more than a deterrent, it is in fact a threat to it's neighbors. Thus we have the Iranian situation. I posited the same idea regarding Pakistan in an earlier posting. So the race goes on and security for anyone is diminished with every nuclear weapon out there regardless of whose hands it is in.

Dear John,

You come across as a snide little bookish pip who has a grasp of a few facts and no concept of how to think and use "facts" except as bullets, never to understand or analyse. You continue to astonish me with your lack of contribution to the discussion.

Jim, Let me take this a step further. Imagine you are a Palistinian and you are determined not to let Israel steal your land and persecute you....put yourself in their shoes for a moment. What you get are difuse groups performing individual attacks, bombings etc. In all wars the "enemy" adjusts tactics to win. 9/11 was about using the brain instead of nukes because that is what they had. Roll the scene forward 5 years. Things deteriorate, anger build to decimate Israel. Diffuse groups again, which can not be targeted with nukes, buy (North Korea), steal (Russia), are gifted (Pakistan) 1-2 nukes. Israel is a 20Km2 area country. You can effectively destroy it. Israel might retaliate in a final blow....10, 20, 50 nukes. Possibly 100s of millions of people killed unecessarily (not that ANY are necessary). Fallout around the world, destabilization, further nukes stolen in the chaos, more to follow. The very EXISTANCE of nukes is a threat to all. Lastly, here on this board and everywhere in the USA there is an endless sense of mourning about 9/11. But I hear such trivialization of mass murder elsewhere. "only" 3000 people died on 9/11 compared to over 100,000 in Iraq due to the war and aftermath. In the nuclear scenario above, the toll would be astronomical. But I see people talking about nuking others like it was a simple club. If one human life is not equal to another then we should not expect others to show us mercy either.

Originally Posted by laguna_bDear John, You come across as a snide little bookish pip ..

1. This may be a violation of the "civility" rule unless you're claiming that John is a backup singer for Gladys Knight. C'mon, behave...please.2. Ever think about how you come across? Kinda like aforementioned Gladys Knight calling the kettle black But what do I know? I still haven't gotten over going to Mass

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